Chicago Haul, Pt. 1 - The Singles

Quick thoughts on some of the old comics I picked up at Wizard World Chicago:

AMAZING ADVENTURES #4 (1970)
The Inhumans strip is the last gasp of the Lee/Kirby team. Kirby had one foot out the door at this point, and didn't want to give Marvel any more new characters. So we get the odd spectacle of the Inhumans vs. the Mandarin, an old Iron Man villain who was an embarassing Asian caricature when he was created, and hasn't improved with age. Still, that dramatically foreshortened splash page, with the Mandarin shoving his trademark magic rings in the reader's face, shows that even when he was half-assing it, Kirby still had plenty of juice (and in a couple of months, he'd be over at DC doing his mind-blowing "Fourth World" series).

The Black Widow story is more down-to-earth, as the Widow has to mediate between a group of young protestors and the police, as well as dealing with a crooked businessman who's manipulating the situation for his own ends. Pretty heady stuff (and still relevant today), but as per usual the hero wins by beating up a bunch of bad guys, and the tricky political issues get brushed aside for the sake of a happy ending. Some great Gene Colan / Bill Everett artwork on this one.

AMAZING ADVENTURES #9 (1971)
By this point, the Inhumans have taken over the whole book, and Gerry Conway and Mike Sekowsky have taken over writing and drawing. And we get another "borrowed" villain: Magneto from the X-Men comics. Given recent developments over at Marvel, it's amusing that Magneto mistakes the Inhumans for mutants, and tries to forcibly conscript them to his cause. It's a decent enough story, but you get the feeling the writers are struggling to find a direction for the Inhumans -- for some reason, they've always worked better as guest-stars/antagonists than they have as leads.

THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #51 (1963)
A freaky hybrid fish-bird-man creature called Tyros takes over Atlantis, and Aquaman and Hawkman join forces to stop him. Standard stuff, but jam-packed with action and interesting gimmicks. The artwork is really impressive, very detailed and dramatic -- it's uncredited, but the GCD says it's by Howard Purcell, an artist I'm not familiar with. Neat stuff.

THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #59 (1965)
Batman and Green Lantern team up to take on the Time Commander. The Commander comes off as unusually clever for a bad guy, as he manages to trick both Bats and GL as part of an elaborate scheme to steal some of Green Lantern's power ring energy to power his time-travel gizmo. But despite being trapped in the past and future, respectively, GL and Bats manage to rally and defeat him. It's a bit "wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey", but fun. Very slick art here by Ramona Fradon -- I didn't realize she'd ever drawn Batman prior to working on the Super Friends comic in the '70s. Great Gil Kane cover, too.

BEOWULF #3-4 (1975)
Once Marvel's Conan comics hit it big, everyone tried to jump on the bandwagon with barbarian fantasy heroes (including Marvel; see below). Writer Michael Uslan does switch things up a little by taking an "everything but the kitchen sink" approach: #3 has a nod to "Little Nemo in Slumberland", and #4 features Count Dracula and one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Despite all the interesting trappings (and some really nice art by Ricardo Villagran), Beowulf himself is a pretty generic warrior-type, and the series didn't last long. I enjoyed it, though, especially the jam-packed #4, which also includes a brief but brutal skirmish with his arch-foe Grendel.

CREATURES ON THE LOOSE #16-17 (1972)
This one has an interesting history. "Gullivar Jones, Warrior of Mars" is loosely based on an obscure novel by Edwin Arnold that actually pre-dates Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter books. Since at the time, the rights to adapt John Carter were tied up elsewhere, Marvel dug up Gullivar and played up the similarites, to the point where this is basically John Carter with the serial numbers filed off. But with Roy Thomas spinning his trademark purple prose, and some absolutely dynamite art by Gil Kane, who's complaining?

CREATURES ON THE LOOSE #27 (1973)
"Thongor, Warrior of the Lost Land" is another adaptation, this time based on a series of novels by Lin Carter, who also worked on Conan. And this is very Conan-esque, with some minor differences -- the setting has some advanced science, in the form of air-ships, as well as magic. And one of Thongor's companions is a friendly sorcerer, which is something the magic-phobic Conan would never have put up with. But mostly it's all the familiar stuff, bashing skulls and rescuing maidens, nicely drawn by Val Mayerik.

DAREDEVIL #108 (1974)
This is a typical mid-'70s Marvel book, with heavy emphasis on the soap opera drama: Daredevil's romance with the Black Widow is on the rocks, and his best friend Foggy Nelson is on death's door after being shot. The villain du jour is the Beetle, an old Spider-Man villain with a charmingly clunky costume (including suction-cup fingers). But he's really just a speedbump on the way to setting up the big plot, involving a mysterious new group called Black Spectre. And it's all To Be Continued, naturally, which was one of the things that made reading Marvel frustrating back in the days of newsstand sales -- you could never be sure if you were going to be able to get the next issue. You kids today don't know how lucky you've got it with your comics shops and pull lists and trade paperbacks and eBay...

DETECTIVE COMICS #481 (1978)
The lead Batman story has a great premise: A doctor has developed a new life-saving surgical technique. But after one of his friends is murdered, he loses his faith in humanity. He challenges Batman to solve the murder in 48 hours, or else he'll burn all his notes and no one will ever benefit from his discovery. Needless to say, Bats pulls it off in the nick of time. The Robin and Batgirl stories are ok, but forgettable. The Man-Bat story has more going for it -- it starts out as a detective yarn, but turns into a comedy of errors, as Man-Bat and his partner keep running afoul of other detectives who are on the same case (Bob Rozakis' Man-Bat stories ought to be collected, they're a real overlooked gem). And the final Batman story is just strange, sort of a throwback to the 1950s with a man transplanting his brain into a giant gorilla. But it's all done in the contemporary, "serious" style, so when the big monkey does show up, it's a real WTF moment. The weird combination of Jim Starlin and P. Craig Russell on the artwork just makes it all the more surreal.

DC SPECIAL #20 (1976)
A collection of Green Lantern reprints from the 1960s. Classic sci-fi, but boy, some aspects of these stories haven't aged well, particularly the attitude towards women. In "The Challenge from 5700 AD", the people of the future grab Green Lantern out of the time stream because they need someone to help fight the mutanted gila monsters that are threatening to take over. But one of the side-effects of time-travel is amnesia, so to make GL feel at home, they give him false memories of being native to the 58th century, and order a woman named Iona to pretend to be his girlfriend. Yikes. But it's totally ok, because she ends up falling in love with him for reals. But once the crisis is over, they send him back to the 20th century with no memory of his trip, leaving poor Iona to pine away. In "Once a Green Lantern, Always a Green Lantern", GL's bosses send him to convince another Green Lantern named Katma Tui not to quit the Corps to get married. Because of course, she couldn't possibly have both a marriage *and* a career. GL concocts an elaborate ruse to convince her that her job is more important than her boyfriend. He even acknowledges that he's in an identical situation, wanting to marry his ladyfriend Carol Ferris, but "I am a man! Perhaps that will make a difference!" Egads.

DC SPECIAL SERIES #11 (1978)
A whopping 80-page "Flash Spectacular", featuring Flash, Golden Age Flash, and Kid Flash (plus an appearance by Johnny Quick) in one adventure. Each hero gets his own chapter (drawn by different artists, including Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Kurt Schaffenberger), then they all come together at the end. Frankly, the plot isn't complex or interesting enough to justify 80 pages, but some of the individual chapters are enjoyable on their own.

HERCULES UNBOUND #4 (1976)
You gotta love the crazy premise here: Ares the war-god started World War III, leaving the Earth a radioactive wasteland. Hercules, who was trapped on Earth, gets free and begins wandering the globe with his companions, looking for a way back to Olympus and trying to survive various threats in the meantime. The series eventually got bogged down trying to tie in to every other post-apocalyptic comic (Kamandi, Atomic Knights, et. al.), but while it lasted, it was a pretty good globe-trotting adventure. And the artwork by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Wally Wood sure didn't hurt, either.

THE INCREDIBLE HULK #185, 187, 189 (1975)
One of the better runs of this series, with writer Len Wein and artist Herb Trimpe (the definitive Hulk artist, in my opinion). I especially like #187, with General Ross leading a commando raid on the Gremlin's Siberian stronghold, while the Hulk (inadvertantly) runs interference for them. #189 is one of those tear-jerker stories the series ran periodically, where the Hulk tries to find a place where he can be accepted, and things inevitably don't work out for him. That sort of thing is ok in small doses, and the story has plenty of "Hulk smash!" action as well, so not too bad.

INCREDIBLE HULK ANNUAL #6 (1977)
A sequel of sorts to the Fantastic Four story that introduced "Him" (aka Adam Warlock). The scientists who created Warlock decide to try again to create their superman, but this time they want to make sure their creation doesn't turn against them. So they recruit famous surgeon Dr. Stephen Strange to essentially electronically lobotomize their creation so it will be nice and obedient once it hatches from its cocoon. Dr. Strange agrees to this for some reason, and sure enough, once the so-called Paragon emerges, it is totally obedient. And the first thing his masters order him to do is kill Dr. Strange. D'oh! Luckily, Doc had telepathically summoned the Hulk to back him up. After a brief skirmish, Paragon evolves into an even more powerful form, and throws off his brainwashing. And just like Warlock, he decides his creators are evil and blows up the lab and everyone in it (Dr. Strange and Hulk manage to escape, natch). So really, it ends up just being a pointless re-hash of the earlier Warlock story. Meh. One thing I did appreciate -- this time, instead of being blonde and golden-skinned, the genetically-perfect superman is dark-haired and brown-skinned. Because why not?

JIMMY OLSEN #151-152 (1972)
The post-Kirby Jimmy Olsen stories are interesting, because they seem to want to get away from Kirby's wild style, but they're not quite sure what to replace it with. #151 has an invasion of alien insects that's pretty out-there (though not as crazy as what Kirby would have come up with). And #152 ties up a leftover plot thread from Kirby's run -- the fact that Morgan Edge was a spy for Darkseid. Apparently, they wanted to keep using the Edge character, so they redeem him by saying the spy was just an evil clone (fair enough, since clones were a recurring device in Kirby's stories). Artists Mike Sekowsky and Bob Oksner try to mimic Kirby's style when drawing Darkseid, but their attempts at "Kirby squiggles" just make him look like he's covered in mud.

MARVEL CHILLERS #2 (1975)
Modred the Mystic was one of the many new characters Marvel tried to launch during this era, but never quite caught on. Reading this issue, I can see why. It's not a bad premise: Modred is a magician from King Arthur's time, who tapped into the power of an evil magic book called the Darkhold. He ends up falling into suspended animation, and when he wakes up in the modern day, the power behind the Darkhold expects him to be its servant. But Modred has no intention of being a slave, and fights back. So basically a cross between Dr. Strange and the Silver Surfer. But it takes an entire issue of blah-blah-blah to get to that point, and the big confrontation between Modred and "The Other" (who only appears as a disembodied voice) amounts to several pages of him monologuing while mystical stuff swirls around. It's just not that compelling, and Modred's "victory" feels perfunctory.

MARVEL PREMIERE #43 (1979)
Paladin, a high-tech mercenary who first appeared in an issue of Daredevil, gets a turn as a solo star. He's hired to protect a woman named Marsha, who's ex-boyfriend is out to kill her. Simple enough, until it turns out her ex is actually a radioactive supervillain named Phantasm. He's slowly dying from being exposed to plutonium while working at a nuclear waste facility, and he and his gang plan to take revenge on the city by blowing up Wall Street. Meanwhile, he resents Marsha for spurning him and "undermining my manhood". Leave it to Don McGregor to predict both "Occupy Wall St." and "Men's Rights Activists" 30 years ahead of time.

MARVEL SPOTLIGHT #26 (1975)
The Scarecrow was another attempt at a mystical superhero, but I enjoyed this one more than Modred, precisely because it didn't try to explain everything to death. We never learn what exactly the Scarecrow is, or where he came from. He never speaks (except to laugh maniacally). We only know that his mission to prevent the evil god Kalumai from manifesting on Earth. There's an epic battle with Kalumai's minions at an aquarium, which ends with the Scarecrow flooding the place and sweeping them all down the drain. It's tense, exciting, and creepy. This series never took off either, but I think it deserved more of a shot than it got.

MASTER OF KUNG FU #17 (1974)
Now here's a series that did catch on, and had a long run. This is early in the strip, when Shang-Chi was still at odds with Sir Denis Nayland Smith and British Intelligence. Sir Denis hires Black Jack Tarr to kill Shang with his tricked-out Murder Mansion. Shang manages to escape all the death-traps, defeats Tarr himself, and then confronts Sir Denis, hoping to convince him that he's not a bad guy like his father. The book hasn't quite hit its stride yet, but this is a solid issue, with the strange mix of action and introspection that was the series' trademark.

RIMA THE JUNGLE GIRL #7 (1975)
I actually found this story pretty disturbing. A wealthy woman and her young son are traveling through the jungle. The kid keeps wandering off and getting attacked by animals, and Rima has to rescue him several times. Eventually we find out what's really going on -- the kid is a rotten little creep who gets off on torturing baby animals, and that's why the mama animals keep coming after him. He winds up getting eaten by a crocodile, and good riddance. (Rima's boyfriend Abel also comes across as a real dick here -- one cross word from Rima, and he's ready to shack up with the kid's mom. Yeesh.)

SUB-MARINER #51-52 (1972)
Bill Everett returns to the character he created back in the 1940s. He hasn't missed a step in terms of his art, but his style is pretty retro and cartoony, which some fans at the time didn't care for. He also introduced Namorita, Namor's teenaged cousin, who's mouthy and kind of annoying. But Namor's still the regal, hot-tempered Sub-Mariner we know and love, monologuing about how awesome he is as he beats his enemies to a pulp. Classic.

SUPERBOY #192 (1972)
A mysterious space-suited invader is buzzing Smallville, but he turns out to be not a space alien, but a young refugee from a lost underground civilization. After some misunderstandings are cleared up, Superboy befriends the kid and helps him get set up with a new family. Aww. In the second story, Superbaby befriends a group of bears, and ends up inadvertantly thwarting a pair of poachers. Superbaby, with his silly antics and broken English, is the kind of character you either love or hate. I like him fine, but only in small doses. Really digging the Bob Brown / Murphy Anderson artwork.

SUPERBOY #207 (1975)
By this point, the Legion of Super-Heroes have taken over the book, and the stories have been amped up from small town shenanigans to epic sci-fi. This issue features the Legion's old foe Universo, and his power of mind control makes him a tricky one to fight, since any of the heroes could get taken over at any minute. The heroes manage, though, and there's an interesting sub-plot about a police officer who's got a secret agenda of his own. The second story deals with the heroic Lightning Lad and his evil brother Lightning Lord -- some good character bits here, as the two are united briefly over a family tragedy.

SUPER FRIENDS #31 (1980)
The Super Friends cartoon show was honestly pretty crappy, but the tie-in comic was much, much better. Writer E. Nelson Bridwell was fond of trivia, and here he brings back an obscure DC character named Black Orchid. Her gimmick was that she would take on different disguises in every adventure, but her true name and face were never revealed. She sticks to that formula here, and not even the Super Friends learn anything about her, but she helps Superman out of a jam when one her old enemies gets hold of a Kryptonite meteor. Ramona Fradon's artwork is stylistically a million miles away from Tony DeZuniga's (Black Orchid's co-creator), but she nonetheless delivers a stylish and sexy rendition of the mysterious heroine.

SUPERMAN #255, 256 (1972), 290 (1975)
This is my favorite era of Superman, clever little done-in-one stories that usually hinge on some puzzle or mystery that Superman has to figure his way around (since there's very litte that can challenge him physically). There's a cute secondary story in #256 where Clark Kent is in a "Big Brother" type program for underprivileged kids. The kid he gets assigned doesn't think much of him, so when an emergency pops up, Clark is determined to handle it as Clark, without using his super-powers. He manages to pull it off, but the kid still isn't impressed. #290 has a classic Mr. Mxyzptlk story, where he causes everyone in Metropolis to speak a different language, just to enjoy the chaos that results. Their clothing changes to match, so Superman spends half the story in a sombrero. The kind of inspired silliness you really can't get away with today.

SUPERMAN FAMILY #184 (1977), 218 (1982)
This anthology was always a bit of a mixed bag, but there's usually at least a couple of good stories per issue. The Lois Lane story in #184 is like a snapshot of '70s culture: The bad guy is a phony guru who's using a combination of Transcendental Meditation and bio-feedback to take over peoples' minds. #218 has an unusually intense Jimmy Olsen story: Jimmy suffers a blackout, and has to work out what happened to him during that time (no, he hasn't been hitting the bottle) and turn the tables on the crooks who assaulted him.

SWAMP THING #21-23 (1976)
The series was on it's last legs at this point. Len Wein and Berni Wrightson were long gone, the supernatural/monster craze was winding down, and DC was trying to steer the book into more of a superhero style in a last-ditch effort to keep it alive. #21 has an alien kidnap Swamp Thing to be part of his zoo/stable of slaves. There's some pathos here, as we learn that the alien is an exile from his native planet, and capturing slaves is his weird way of trying to alleve his loneliness. As you might guess, it ends tragically, and Swampy is left to ponder his own status as an exile from humanity. #23 introduces Swamp Thing's heretofore-unmentioned brother, a scientist who manages to restore him back to human form. I'm guessing that he would have begun switching back and forth between human and monster form, ala the Hulk, but the book only lasted one more issue after this. A shame to see this once-classic series go out with a whimper.

TOMB OF DRACULA #66 (1978)
One of the all-time greatest runs of a Marvel comic. Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan were just knocking it out of the park, issue after issue. In this storyline, Dracula has had his vampire powers stripped away, and he has to survive as a normal human on the streets of New York with a bounty hunter on his trail. Drac's got his back to the wall, but he's still smart, ruthless, and tough, and (as was often the case with this series), you end up kind of rooting for him in spite of everything.

WANTED: THE WORLD'S MOST DANGEROUS VILLAINS #3, 9 (1973)
This reprint anthology was a big favorite of mine as a kid, and my introduction to the "Golden Age" of comics. There's some truly great artwork here: Vigilante by Mort Meskin, Hawkman by Joe Kubert, Sandman by Simon & Kirby, et. al. Plus I love the covers, laid out like (what else?) "wanted" posters.

WEIRD WONDER TALES #22 (1977)
An interesting experiment in trying to repackage and "freshen up" old material to appeal to a new audience. They took an obscure mystic hero from the '60s named Dr. Droom, changed his name to Dr. Druid, and touched up some of the artwork to make him look more superhero-y. The story here is ok -- a cruise ship is captured by an underwater civilization, who plan to study the passengers and use that knowledge to invade the surface. Dr. Druid wins a little too easily here, by simultaneously hypnotizing the entire underwater city into forgetting their plans for conquest! Kirby's designs for the fish-like "Aquaticans" is great, though. I wonder if Sub-Mariner or somebody ever ran into them again? Knowing Marvel, they probably turned up somewhere.